“I’m a desert woman, and I’m proud of that. I want my husband
to wander as free as the wind that shapes the dunes. And, if I have
to, I will accept the fact that he has become a part of the clouds, and
the animals, and the water of the desert.”
The boy went to look for the Englishman. He wanted to tell him
about Fatima. He was surprised when he saw that the Englishman
had built himself a furnace outside his tent. It was a strange furnace,
fueled by firewood, with a transparent flask heating on top. As the
Englishman stared out at the desert, his eyes seemed brighter than
they had when he was reading his books.
“This is the first phase of the job,” he said. “I have to separate out
the sulfur. To do that successfully, I must have no fear of failure. It
was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master
Work. Now, I’m beginning what I could have started ten years ago.
But I’m happy at least that I didn’t wait twenty years.”
He continued to feed the fire, and the boy stayed on until the
desert turned pink in the setting sun. He felt the urge to go out into
the desert, to see if its silence held the answers to his questions.
He wandered for a while, keeping the date palms of the oasis
within sight. He listened to the wind, and felt the stones beneath his
feet. Here and there, he found a shell, and realized that the desert, in
remote times, had been a sea. He sat on a stone, and allowed himself
to become hypnotized by the horizon. He tried to deal with the
concept of love as distinct from possession, and couldn’t separate
them. But Fatima was a woman of the desert, and, if anything could
help him to understand, it was the desert.
As he sat there thinking, he sensed movement above him.
Looking up, he saw a pair of hawks flying high in the sky.
He watched the hawks as they drifted on the wind. Although
their flight appeared to have no pattern, it made a certain kind of